The Bad in Each Other
by cheesecakeplz
Summary: His daemon, his soul-John Watson's soul-was being taken hostage by the madman Sherlock Holmes. How fitting. His Dark Materials AU. Johnlock.
1. A Priori

**The Bad In Each Other  
**_Whatever satisfies the soul is truth._

-Walt Whitman

* * *

John Watson had not slept for several days straight, and here is why;

The zeppelin that exploded into a cacophony of flames, the scream of a man whose leg had been severed, the horrid yip-yip of desert-themed daemons and men that thundered past in ambush, the bullet that tore open his shoulder, and the fact that John would wake up with the vicious thrill of memory still thudding through his chest.

Evie would stare at him in alarm from the edge of the bed before groaning, ruined and meek, and crawl to his side. John would scoop his daemon to his chest and bury his face in her shoulder as he struggled with his trauma, but the border collie always said nothing, shivers racking her own bony frame for hours on end.

No words were spoken—no matter what hour or how horrid the dream—and each night John's hand came away with larger and larger clumps of blond-and-white fur.

"Jesus," He whispered aloud on the eve of the fourth night when his fingers touched a stretch of pink skin where fur had been not a day before.

_A daemon is a physical manifestation of a person's soul_.

"Jesus," John said again, his throat constricting with tears.

Evie did not reply, only stared at the window with her jaw lightly quavering as if in begrudging agreement.

Sleeping had become the least of their worries.

**x**.

Their salvation came in the form of a consulting detective and his daemon that never slept at all (or _so they claimed, the pompous bastards_, John later remarked fondly).

They met in the underground laboratory of St. Bartholomew University—one of the estranged sister campuses to the famous Jordan College—and the stench of chemicals had nearly driven John and Evie straight back up the stairwell, grimacing with memories of the war.

They certainly would've, had it not been for the curiosity at seeing a seemingly daemonless man wearing a pair of blue-glass goggles as he hunched over his experiments.

His manner was nothing of a scientist; his black coat was a dead give-away, but furthermore his hands were unclothed as if handling dangerous chemicals or electric sparks couldn't possibly harm him.

"Central or Western?"

John blinked, confused, at who had spoken. The voice had been soft and feminine, but with an almost cruel tone to it—certainly not belonging to the man with the coat.

Shrugging, John decided to answer; "Sorry, what?"

"Which was it—Central or Western?" The voice said again, and this time the speaker revealed herself by craning over the collar of the man's jacket. She was a bright-eyed Jackdaw, impossibly sleek and her head tilted to one side.

_ "_Ah. The man's daemon,"Evie mumbled as she shifted her weight from paw to paw. "But how did he know about...?"

John gave a subtle nod and replied, though speaking to another's daemon before their partner made his stomach twist uncomfortably: "Central."

The jackdaw hummed and turned away to stare at her partner's experiment. Silence. John cleared his throat. "Sorry, how did you—?"

A young woman with mousy brown hair and an equally timid expression scuffled into the room and handed the black-coated man a cup of tea, to which the jackdaw said in an sharp tone; "Tea. Thank you, Molly." The woman flushed as the dormouse daemon riding on her shoulder burrowed his little face away, flustered.

"You're welcome, um...so, perhaps tomorrow, at twelve—"

"Can't," The jackdaw snapped, twitching her head to the side again, "we've things to do. That panserbjorne corpse won't stay forever. What happened to the lipstick?"

John watched, both mystified and disturbed, as the jackdaw went on to critique the woman's style of makeup before giving her a blatant dismissal. Evie frowned.

Suddenly, the man in the coat simultaneously stood and snapped shut the metal grid he had been tampering with, snapping John and Evie from their thoughts. "I've got my eye on a nice little place in Central London. Together we ought to be able to afford it. We meet there tomorrow evening at seven o'clock. Sorry, got to dash; I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary." The man said, adjusting his scarf with a self-importance John thought only belonged to members of the Church.

It struck John in a way that was both annoying and strangely pleasant, though he suspected that was only because it had been so long that he had felt anything at all.

Evie took initiative, as always. "Is that it, then?"

The man halted in his flounce for the doorway and turned absently to face both Evie and John. "Is that what?"

"We've only just met, and we're going to go look at a flat." John elaborated curtly, readjusting his grip on his cane for stability, "We don't know a thing about each other. I don't know where we're meeting. I don't even know your name."

The jackdaw on the black-coated man's shoulder clicked her beak once, and suddenly both daemon and man were staring them down with terrifying, analytical brilliance.

The man began in a low, rushing monotone.

"Your daemon's a typically domesticated canine, so you're either naturally loyal and follow orders well or had a certain job that required to be both—most likely the latter, judging by your stance and military-style haircut. However, your daemon does not have the standard _soldier_ identification clip on her ear, so I know you're an army _doctor_ and you've been invalided home from the Central Desert Conflict." He had paused for breath while the jackdaw on his shoulder tilted her head at an unsettling ninety-degree angle, "I know you've got a brother who's worried about you, but you won't go to him for help because you don't approve of him—possibly because he's an alcoholic, more likely because he recently walked out on his wife. That's enough to be going on with, don't you think?" The detective deduced with a condescendingly flat expression, his gray-green-blue eyes never once straying from John's. "The name's Sherlock Holmes, my daemon is Maquinn, and the address is 221B Baker Street. Afternoon."

After swirl of coattail and a flutter of wings, Sherlock Holmes and Maquinn were gone.

Stamford chuckled at the look of complete amazement on John and Evie's faces. "Yeah," He said, patting John's uninjured shoulder, "He's always like that."

Evie set her jaw, and at once John knew by her expression that they hadn't seen the last of Sherlock or Maquinn.

Not by a long shot.

* * *

**A/N**: Yes, another daemonfic, but this time it takes place in the HDMverse! For those of you who don't know, the HDMverse is based off the late 1890s with a few major changes in geography and lifestyle. Therefore, the progression of the canon Sherlock plotline will run quite differently with the addition of daemons, though it will remain centered around Sir Conan Doyle/Moftiss's stories.

Chapters will be around this size due to school eating away at my life. OTL

Thank you for reading, and please review! C:


	2. A Posteri

**The Bad In Each Other**

_Whatever satisfies the soul is truth._

-Walt Whitman

* * *

Somewhere in the midst of bolting down London's streets, jumping from roof to roof, and catching random rides on the back of late-night street trollies, John realized something: this was what he had missed. The adrenaline rush, the restless pursuit of danger—it was an addiction rather than a disorder, as his therapist had thought.

With Sherlock and Maquinn leading the way, John felt invincible.

_This_, he thought with a side-look at Evie's grinning face, _was living_.

Even though the stage driver hadn't belonged to the serial murderer, when the foursome ended slumped at the entryway to their flat John couldn't recall feeling more satisfied in his life—and judging from the look in Sherlock's eyes, he knew it, too.

"That was ridiculous," John breathed, one hand pressed to his chest as if to hold back laughter, "That was the most ridiculous thing I've ever done."

"And you invaded Central Paristan."

"We'll take the flat." Evie said suddenly, smirking up at Maquinn. The jackdaw observed her for a moment, minty-gray eyes gleaming with silent praise; "I thought that went without saying."

Sherlock just was opening his mouth to speak when several loud bumps came from upstairs.

Maquinn's beak clacked shut and in a blur of black, both she and her partner had swept up the staircase with John and Evie at their heels.

The sight that met them was almost so absurd that John laughed: the London police had swarmed the entire flat. Daemons—monkeys, birds, and domestic dogs, mostly—were clambering across furniture to pull up various objects and then returning to their partners for inspection.

"What are you doing?" Sherlock snapped, though the police force hardly took notice as they bustled about the flat. However, one gray-haired man that sat comfortably on the sofa with a scruffy beagle on his lap raised his hand in greeting. His expression was far from pleased, but both man and beagle had a certain grudging sympathy in their eyes that made John nervous for exactly what the police were here for.

The man—DI G. Lestrade, as the badge on his chest claimed—replied to Sherlock's demand with a frown; "Well, I knew you'd find the case. I'm not stupid."

Maquinn huffed in condescending disbelief, but Sherlock's eyes remained stonily fixated on Lestrade. "You can't just break into my flat."

The DI shrugged, looking slightly less contrite than before. "You can't withhold evidence. And I didn't break into your flat—"

Sherlock's exaggerated flailing of arms was enough distraction for Lestrade to halt mid-sentence and Maquinn to flutter out of reach with an aggravated squawk. "Then what do you call this?!" The consulting detective snarled, gesturing angrily to the crowd of lawkeepers.

Both Lestrade and his daemon exchanged a slightly questioning glance before the beagle exclaimed, somewhat ashamedly as if admitting an embarrassing secret; "It's a drugs bust!"

Sherlock bared his teeth and swung around, his cape billowing behind like a pair of great, black wings; "I'm not your sniffer dog."

"No," Lestrade quipped, ruffling his beagle daemon's head once before she leapt off his lap, "Anderson and Berta are my sniffer dogs."

As if on cue, a wall-eyed Boston terrier scrambled out from the underfoot of the police force carrying a plastic bag of something red and gelatinous in its jowls; the dog skittered once, confused by the change in surroundings, before righting itself with an odd snorting noise. A man with a parted coif for hair—Anderson—turned in unison with the terrier and waved patronizingly at Sherlock.

The consulting detective was fuming. "What the hell are they doing on a drugs bust?"

"Oh, I volunteered." Anderson retorted smugly.

Lestrade's daemon shrugged, obviously contrite for angering Maquinn into shedding a few feathers but determined to remain firm. "They all did." She explained with a tip of her head to the swarm of lawkeepers. "They're not strictly speaking on the drugs squad, you see, but they're very keen."

"Oh shut up, Ramona, and for goodness's sake stop staring at me with that horrifically commiserating expression; I'm not an invalid." Maquinn spat as her plumage became so immensely ruffled that both Evie and John had to fight back a laugh. Sherlock, however, had a far more intimidating stature and the manic darkness crossing his face staunched any humor in the situation. "So. You've set up a pretend drugs bust to...what? Bully me into giving you the suitcase?"

Maquinn was hissing now, wings spread and talons scraping the table. Ramona's eyebrows rose, but she stood her ground.

"Now Sherlock," Lestrade began while he stood to properly address the other detective—however, even at full height he barely reached Sherlock's chin. "We wouldn't be in this mess if you just...cooperated once and a while."

"I disagree, Lestrade." Sherlock cut back, putting venomous inflection on the DI's name, "_I_ suppose we wouldn't be in this mess if you did your job once and a while."

"According to someone, the murderer has the case and—" Anderson chipped in with a sneer while his daemon scuttled past; "-–we found it in the hands of our favorite psychopath. Now, what does that tell us, eh?" The terrier tilted her head and curled her jowls.

She quickly retreated when Maquinn spread her wings full-span, and Anderson, too, as Sherlock spun around to face him.

"I'm not a psychopath, Anderson, I'm a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research—for once." The detective snapped before billowing past the crowd, "And if I _were_ guilty, I certainly wouldn't be stupid enough to hide the evidence in my flat, of all places. Though you have your fair share of secrets in _your_ flat, don't you, Anderson?...Donovan?"

Both the sergeant detective and forensic specialist flushed and hurriedly left the living room, their daemons blundering behind them, but not before Anderson's daemon knocked over a nest of scraps of paper and red string sitting atop a massive pile of books. The rubbish heap went tumbling to the floor, punctuated by a smash and a squawk of horror from Maquinn. John craned his neck to see what had fallen, and winced to see the remains of several test tubes lying in a pool of hissing gray liquid. He frowned even deeper when he found the liquid was slowly eating through the floor.

Sherlock threw his hands in the air and yanked his collar up to hide behind it like a petulant child; "For goodness's sake—someone clean that up before it spreads!"

The room erupted into chaos once again, with policemen rushing to and fro, Mrs. Hudson and her gray-feathered hen daemon bustling in, asking about for anyone who might want tea, and was there any problem, sir? "Sherlock is always such a dear, you know, but he does have his fair share of oddities..."

Said consulting detective was pressing one palm to his temple while Maquinn settled onto a nearby table covered in jars of formaldehyde, cawing at whoever dared too close.

Evie watched in confusion as Sherlock paced by the window for several minutes, humming irritably, before turning on his heel and breezing out of the flat without so much as a word. Evie glanced about. None of the police force seemed to have noticed his leave from the crowd—nor had Mrs. Hudson—and Maquinn still sat with her wings folded neatly along her back.

The border collie glanced between the door and Maquinn.

It didn't match up.

"John," Evie said, nudging her partner's leg, "I think we should head out for a bit, you know. While these guys clean up. Alright?"

John paused mid-sentence in his conversation with Lestrade and blinked down at Evie, mildly confused, before nodding. "Right, okay. We're just taking up space as it is. Er...pleasure to meet you, Inspector."

Shaking his head, Lestrade gave a dry smile. "Likewise. And please, call me Greg." The inspector patted his daemon's side. "And Ramona. No need to be formal, really."

"If you say so. Right, well...be seeing you."

As soon as they exited 221B, Evie bolted down the sidewalk at top speed; John stumbled along behind her, grimacing with the stab of pain that came with being apart from his daemon however briefly. "Bloody hell, Evie, what's gotten into you?" Soon after finding the border collie was not slowing, he picked up his pace into a full-out run.

"We're following Sherlock."

"Wh—Sherlock was at the flat!"

"No, _Maquinn_ was at the flat. This way!" The pair took a sharp right down the dimly-lit streets with Evie at the lead.

John's eyebrows furrowed. "What? No, that's impossible."

His daemon spared him a grim smile over the shoulder as they ran. "John, we've been in a war. You should know by now that _nothing_ is impossible."

"...True. So, you're quite sure you're on the scent?"

"Of course. Sherlock has quite the unique smell—chemicals, medical sanitizer, tobacco smoke, apple vinegar...I'd know it anywhere."

"We've only known him for...what, two days?"

Evie spared him an odd, flickering glance that John had never quite seen before on his daemon's face. "Well. Yes. That's true."

"...We'll think more about that later, then."

* * *

**A/N**: Phew! This took forever to write—this is only part one, so there's more to come! With actual action and...stuff. Sorry for the slow updates, I'm the worst procrastinator ever.


	3. Ghost in the Machine

**The Bad In Each Other**

_Whatever satisfies the soul is truth._

-Walt Whitman

* * *

Chests heaving, Evie and John gazed up at where Sherlock's scent had led them: a simple stagecoach, battered and muddied at the wheels but entirely nondescript. It was a newer model—one drawn by a steering wheel and mechanics rather than man and horse. The duo exchanged a curious look before taking stock of their surroundings.

"'Rachel's Little Lights'? What on earth would Sherlock want with a electrical store?" John exclaimed, placing his hands on his hips. "I thought the Church had these banned last year. Something about mercurial vapors—"

A resounding smash came from inside the store, immediately jolting John from his train of thought to seize upon the doorknob—only to find it was locked from the inside. He kicked twice at the lock, but the heavy wooden door hardly budged. Evie whined worriedly, "It's been barricaded—we'll have to break the windows!"

John grit his teeth and took in a deep breath before striding to the stagecoach and tugged at the joint-cog between door and wheel till it came off with a massive cloud of steam; then, thinking quickly, he covered his face with his coat and hurtled the sizable cog through the display window.

The responding crash signified he had been successful. Without further ado, he kicked the remaining shards of glass from the framework and bounded inside, yanking his glove from his right hand to reveal the intricate brass arm beneath-along with its built-in pistol that protruded from his wrist with a series of minute clicks.

The man—an older fellow with goggles and tremendously oversized teeth along with a hefty rat daemon to match—who had been pinning Sherlock to a countertop while forcing a sparking, mask-like contraption over his mouth; the dark circles around Sherlock's bleary eyes were enough to indicate that the mask was draining him both physically and mentally. The genius's eyes trailed over to John, though the sudden flash in them did not signify fear of death—rather something akin to "what took you so long?"

John didn't waste another second.

"Let him go or I shoot." He snarled, aiming the pistol at Sherlock's assailant but the man only grinned, his cracked goggles further expanding the crow's feet at his eyes. John imagined he must have been kind, once upon a time.

"Well, now," The man crooned as his mask-machine spat out another shower of sparks, "he didn't say nuffin' 'bout you havin' friends, mister 'olmes!"

John flicked off the safety on his gun. "Let. Him. Go."

Evie's snarling rose to a vicious hum that radiated around the close space of the electrical store. The man's daemon squealed back, bearing her fangs. The man's hands tightened, then drew back with an empty syringe clenched in his fist. Sherlock's head went limp.

Almost instinctively, John fired, and the man toppled backward with the force of the bullet striking him directly in the collarbone. Evie darted forward and struck the coachdriver's daemon with her paw; the rat fell atop her partner with a terrible shriek.

A cloud of sparks flew up as the mask-like device slid from Sherlock's mouth and landed heavily on the carpet, billowing out black-golden smoke. John stepped around it, eyeing the smoke suspiciously, and moved to check Sherlock's condition—only to freeze as the consulting detective sat up with a gasp of breath, coughed into his scarf, and rubbed his eyes as if just having risen from water.

John was shocked silent at Sherlock's sudden recovery and said nothing as the man pushed past him and crouched beside his attacker, face grim in the over-saturated lighting of the store. His eyes were bloodshot and cruel as he yanked the steaming mask-machine to him and held it threateningly over the man's daemon.

"You're dying, but there's still plenty of time. Tell me who sent you." Sherlock hissed, giving the machine a shake for good measure. The rat daemon was horrified, her chest heaving frantically as she looked from the machine to her partner—however, his response was only to shake his head and gasp, overwhelmed with pain.

"Tell me." Sherlock snarled again, holding the mask closer to the daemon's face; the machine flared pale red from exertion and began spewing even more smoke, but Sherlock was determined; his eyes were fixed on the man's face even as the captive daemon began to writhe, tiny bits of fur and skin being pulled away into golden dust that was promptly sucked into the machine.

"Tell me!"

The man shook his head, eyes bulbous in his sunken skull, and the rat screamed on.

"TELL ME WHO SENT YOU!"

Finally the man relented, letting out an agonized wail; "MORIARTY!"

Sherlock drew the machine away, but the daemon fell back without its support, dead. The man, too, had breathed his last—John could tell that at a glance his heart had given way from sheer overcapacity.

They had just killed a man, John mused, but at least it hadn't been too messy. He really should be more upset with Sherlock's behavior, but...

Gathering the equipment into his arms, Sherlock adjusted the lapels of his coat and huffed before glancing over his shoulder at John and Evie. "Well, you took your time."

John smirked dryly in response, clicking the pistol back into its casing. "Sorry, the leg was giving us trouble."

Sherlock gave a stiff smile and stood. "No, it wasn't."

John's smile grew into a grin. "No, it wasn't." He exhaled, blowing out his cheeks, and placed his hands in his pockets. "So, shall we sent a textagram to Lestrade? I've got my Watch..." He began to tap away at the miniature telegram system but Sherlock placed a hand on his forearm.

"It would be quicker to catch a stagecoach." Sherlock replied with a snort. "Though I'm not sure if this man's quite up to the task to take us anywhere."

Despite himself, John chuckled.

Sherlock began to chuckle, too.

They stood in the wreckage of the store, giggling for a good minute before Evie barked to draw their attention; Maquinn had just swooped in to settle on Sherlock's shoulder.

"Ugh!" She said, looking down her beak at the damage. "I leave for one hour and this is what I come back to?"

Sherlock and John exchanged a grin that, inconceivably, was the first of many to come in spite of the army doctor and the consulting detective, forever running through the underbelly of London.

* * *

A/N: I can never get action scenes right. I'll have to work on those before the next chapter, which features a certain Westwood-wearing gentleman and his sniper. /winkwink


End file.
